View the Photo Album of David Robert Crews

Eighteen More Veterans Administration Medical Centers
Are Under The Ax

Ft. Howard Maryland Veterans Administration Medical Center is the first VA property that will be turned into a veteran and non-veteran independent, assisted living and geriatric care housing project. Eighteen more VAMCs are targeted for the same drastic changes. If you are an American military veteran, or someone who cares about veterans issues, and one of these VAMCs, on the list that follows later in this article, is not near your home, is not your or your loved one’s source of medical care, it is still important for you to be aware of what is happening. Your VAMC could be next.

Fort Howard, Maryland
Veterans Administration Medical Center

This concerns all of America’s Military Veterans, though it is about a Maryland Veterans Administration facility.

The Ft. Howard Veterans Administration Medical Center property in Baltimore County Maryland is the last clean, open waterfront property in the Baltimore area that is not developed to the hilt. That is about to change. The property is about to become home to many residents when a housing project, named Bayside at Ft. Howard, is to be built there where people can rent living space in a continuing care senior housing community. The future residents of Bayside will not be required to have served in the United States military to qualify to be eligible to rent there. It is not going to be a veterans facility. It is a “mixed use” project, with veterans given preferences on placement in rental units and some discount on their rent. Those residents are going to need substantial incomes or savings to be able to afford to live there.

An Italian Nice Guy

Tony was a nice little Italian immigrant man who came up, from New Jersey, to hunt Black Bears at the Maine hunting lodge where I worked guiding bear hunters. He was there on a one week trip with a six-man party of Italian guys from New Jersey and New York. I learned a lot about him that week from his hunting buddies, from what he talked about and by the way that he handled himself.

The House Fire

In the summer of 1968, I turned eighteen years old. I spent fifteen days of that summer vacationing at my Uncle Finley’s hunting lodge in Moro, Maine. On one of those days, I was called upon to help out at a house fire.

The Day I Fell I Love With Patten, Maine

I laid in bed that night thinking about how easy goin’, peaceful and levelheaded Patten People are and how bright, happy, good looking and friendly the teenagers in town are and I went to sleep that night knowing that I had fallen head over heels in love with Patten, Maine.

The Rocket Scientist

One of the most powerful examples of my experiences as a bear hunting guide was the time that a Washington, D.C. Rocket Scientist darn near shot my head off. It happened in the summer of 1969, when I was a nineteen-year-old kid from the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland, working at my uncle's hunting lodge in northern Maine.

Jungle Dirt

Jerry looked at Sam with deep respect, admiration and wonder because of Sam’s ability to make it through the mud and blood of Vietnam without a scratch. Two of Jerry’s high school buddies had been killed in Vietnam, and the nightly TV news reports of body counts and filmed scenes of tired, frustrated warriors had sickened him to the point that he wouldn't watch the news anymore. Also, like many other nineteen-year-old American lads at that time, he was expecting to receive his military draft notice any day.
Consequently, Sam was especially impressive to him.
 

Bananastein

Franky Violet, Town Cop and Carpenter had misspoken those words at a town hall meeting in Patten, Maine back in 1969. That was the first time that local marihuana users were the subject of discussion at a public forum in that small New England town, which is nestled in The Katahdin Valley area. Franky was sure that he knew who was bringing the stuff into the area from the outside, and who was buying, selling and smoking it. He had declared a one-man war against the potheads.

The Easiest Way to Carry a Dead Bear or My Uncle Finley Couldn't Handle It

The dead male black bear weighed 372 lb. on Katahdin Lodge and Camp’s official scale. That hefty, dead bruin had been shot and killed, at a bear bait, by one of the lodge’s paying hunters. It was the biggest bear that had ever been loaded up into a pickup truck bed by just two men from the lodge, prior to that July day in 1969.

My VW Bug Trip to Maine

In June of 1970, I was on military leave from the U.S. Army and was spending a week up at Katahdin Lodge and Camps in Patten, Maine. My Uncle Finley owned the Lodge and I had worked there for him and my Aunt Martha during the year previous to me entering the Army. In May 1970, I had graduated from U.S. Army Photographic Laboratory Technician School and was assigned to report to my new duty station on Okinawa in June. While I was attending photo lab tech school, I had bought a white 1961 Volkswagen Beetle with a sunroof. Man o’ day that VW Bug was fun to drive.

Then They Own You

On my first day back at the Lodge, I got to do something which I had wanted to do for a very long time, drive a four wheel drive Chevy Suburban. I had wanted to buy a Suburban since 1969, when I found out that Suburbans have seats enough for seven other people to go along with me on outdoor adventures but with the seats folded down a snowmobile can fit in the back or a couple of campers can sleep back there. The Lodge owned one Suburban and two pick-up trucks; all were equipped with two-way radios, and there was a base station to the radio system in the lodge.